Who'd Have the Chutzpah to Hit Hollywood? Halle Would!

If it took balls to make Bruised -- and it didn't -- Halle Berry's weigh a ton.

As editor-in-chief my day-to-day involved challenging assignments.

Note: yeah, the title IS misleading as caring about Hollywood and Hollywood movies is really much less interesting than celebrity sex appeal and a sudden nearness to it. So…live with it.

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New York City never gets out of your blood. This doesn’t apply to the arriviste, the johnny-come-lately’s who think the city is so fab and exists just to complete them the way their hometowns somehow couldn’t. This, however, very much applies to those natives who comfortably divide the world into those who know, largely other New Yorkers…maybe, and those without a fucking clue.

Because everybody’s got a hustle, everybody’s working a hustle, and like an army buddy of mine once said, “You know the phrase: ‘tell it to the Marines’? We started that because Marines will believe anything.”

Yeah. That city gets in your blood and if you’re born and bred there you’re pulling up the exact opposite. You believe very little on first blush.

Because? Because that’s what suckers do and if there’s something stronger than a fear of death here, it’s a fear of being caught out.

“Hey! Halle Berry has agreed to be on the cover.”

We were huddled in a small office at CODE magazine, a men’s fashion magazine for “men of color”, paid for and published by Larry Flynt who, unbeknownst to most, had as many non-porn titles as he had porn titles.

“[T]he stairway follow”, for most women? Just getting from A to B. For many men walking behind a woman? An ocular minefield. But me? Forgetaboutit.

The speaker was our Style Editor and talent wrangler extraordinaire Mick Edwards. We were making issue assignments and the question hung, “who would/should do the piece?”

I’m a noted windbag though and so windbags got to windbag.

“The problem with doing any sort of article on Halle Berry,” I was now sashaying around an office too small for any sashaying really. “Is that most writers who have covered her, even the gay ones, fall for the okey doke. The ‘ohmigod she’s so beautiful’ this and ‘she’s so stunning’ that…”

I imagined I was being watched but I was largely unaware of being watched the way one would watch someone driving the wrong way down a one-way street.

“What the piece really needs is someone with the…FORTITUDE…to resist,” I wound up. “I mean I think the LEAST interesting thing about her is the way she looks. Besides which I’ve been surrounded by beautiful women my whole life. It’s CHARACTER I care about. And any piece that doesn’t set out to reveal this, is garbage! But who can we find who resist these hypnotizing charms?!?!? WHO?!?!?”

“Why don’t you just do the piece?” If there was sarcasm in her delivery I was in no position to hear it.

“YES! Why DON’T I just do the piece?!?”

I had thusly convinced myself that the best man for the job was the man who could hold the job line. Never mind that that man was me. Bold choices are not always bad choices!

“Uh hunh. I’ll set it up.” Her eyes may have rolled. Or maybe it was a trick of the light.

In any case it was set up and on the appointed day, she drove me, fittingly enough, into the Hollywood Hills. I spent five minutes thinking about what to wear and if I had been gunning for an outfit not out of place while waiting for the bus, this would have been it. Button down dress shirt, Dickies work pants, Sears Diehard steel toe, low-top work shoes.

I looked like a shop foreman because I had set out to look like a shop foreman. Call this my first stage resistance.

“Here we go.”

A lot of celebrity interviews happen in hotel rooms, or offices, restaurants, cigar clubs even (thanks for this Laurence Fishburne). But homes?

“It’s her house…?” I ask. Voice on tremolo.

“Yup. Go get ‘em tiger.” And for that extra added dollop of Mom. “I’ll wait until someone answers the door.”

It was Halle. At the bottom of what looked like a long marble staircase…spreading up behind her…? Everything…

Yeah. A maid. Or housekeeper. Or assistant.

“Hi!!!!” It was Halle. At the bottom of what looked like a long marble staircase. The house was Snoopy dog house cool. That is, it looked like nothing from the street side but spreading up behind her…? Everything, it looked like.

“I’ll leave you two at it!” And in a puff of smoke Edwards spun off into the Hollywood afternoon.

“Come on in.” I stepped into the alcove, she locked the door behind me and led me up the stairs. Someone just, hours before this writing, had criticized my writing as being “quintessentially male.” Something I have no quibble with. But as the father of four daughters and the brother of four sisters I was tuned a little differently than most dudes here.

That is, “the stairway follow”, for most women? Just getting from A to B. For many men walking behind a woman? An ocular minefield. But me? Forgetaboutit.

“Great place you got here,” I said noticing the tone on tone earth tone thing. And the hand rails. And really nice and tasteful touches all around.

“Thanks.” She stops in the kitchen and speaking to a woman there, Halle lets her go for the day before gesturing that I should follow to her living room. Alone. And pointing to a couch, she sits on my left, in an easy chair at couch end. I’m facing a fountain and her side yard. She’s facing me.

I turn on the tape recorder and we start chatting. I have to turn to look at her and when I do, she’s earnest and direct enough that I start to think: “THEY’ve been doing this to her.”

That is, she’s just being her, and all of that Halle as Kewpie doll shit? That’s lazy journalism doing what it does.

See, I’m finding her engaged and engaging. This was the year that she was engaged to Eric Benet after divorcing her baseball playing first husband, and she had also left the scene of a fender bender, causing some minor PR ripple of indeterminate effect.

She’s ducking nothing and when I ask if, after her first marriage had ended, she thought that driven by a certain amount of suicidal ideation she had, without much fanfare, gone off to volunteer in the shoot-you-to-death-in-the-streets Balkan War because of it, she smiled.

“Maybe. Possibly. I guess I never thought about it before. Really.”

She had now moved where she was sitting when she had disappeared to get me some water. Now she was sitting to my right. Closer. And as she sat, she crossed and uncrossed her shoeless feet, and her legs at the ankles.

I had to look away. Not because I was weakening. Not this. But because I’m a mouth to head guy and what I most want to say now is the creepiest thing I could say maybe: your feet and ankles remind me of my MOTHER’S feet and ankles. True, but a little weird. Considering the circumstances.

Which were: the lights had faded, I had run out of cassette tape to record on, and she was lighting candles before coming to sit next to me on the couch.

She also had a curious affectation. She turned her head to hear me better. She had to I guess. The scuttlebutt had told me that she was partially deaf in one ear from where she had been struck by an ex that many suggested was Wesley Snipes.

And then after a pause this: “so…what do you want to do now?”

What did I want to do now?

I loved my then wife. And my daughters. Like I’m sure she loved her fiancé. But what did I WANT to do?

Given the range of possible responses, all of which were considered in the same kind of space where your life flashes before your eyes, I knew that professionalism would win out and no matter what happened, I’d have to tell the world about it.

Which is funny considering me once famously offering to a friend that I had no friends with ethics.

However long this flash took though, two seconds by my rendering, it was just enough for me to consider the why. She was earnest, honest, had a sense of humor and more importantly wasn’t at all what I expected. Which is to say: GREAT.

Yeah. I had been honey trapped and was as worthless as anyone else I would have sent in there to do the job.

Then she helped. Like a saint.

“I’ll take you wherever you need to go now.” And she bundled me in her car, not the one she had recently crashed, took me to Beverly Hills and dropped me off on a corner where I stood blinking in the LA night for what seemed like hours but was probably not. Left me wondering how I could have so badly played my hand.

The eventual published article? In it I copped to me taking an L on this one. And being a sore loser I’ve not written about it again until now. But why now?

Well she just directed a movie called Bruised, about MMA and, ostensibly, has been training in MMA as well. Something I’ve been doing for decades now. Which means? You got it. I’m winning the rubber match!

That is, it’s a stone cold lock. Bet the house on it. And on her. Because despite what they say, past performance is an indicator of future successes and it’s very possibly true that once outplayed, like I obviously was, always outplayed.

Have I seen the movie Bruised yet? Seen it?!?! Living it is more like it.

Should you see it? I dare you to.